Everyone knows ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The tale of the frightfully avaricious Scrooge, the impecunious Bob Cratchit and his effervescent Tiny Tim is all but inescapable during the holidays. There have been countless stage productions and films, including the new Disney version, and everyone has heard a thousand and one times the famed exclamation from the Read More
BookEnds
Lower Fairfield County's online book club
Archive for the ‘classics’ Category
Ode to Keats
This seems to be the year of John Keats: in July, his house was reopened to the public in Hampstead Heath, London, and this week, “Bright Star”, the new film about Keats’ brief love affair with Fanny Brawne, opens in theatres. Directed by Jane Campion, the movie got a lovely review in the New Read More
Nooooooooo!
Reading Rainbow, a favorite from my childhood, is to end its 26-year run, NPR reports. I’m so sad. How will kids know what to read without LeVar Burton?
Eat your words
As the summer melts blissfully into the thick, sultry humidity of August, the library can become a delicious oasis of cool; the air-conditioned stacks of arid-smelling books and chilled silence of the hushed reading rooms are a delight on the hottest, muggiest of days. What could possibly be more delicious, more satisfying and better suited Read More
Memories of the late Frank McCourt, seven months after our interview
When I interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt back on Jan. 20, in anticipation of his talk at Purchase (N.Y.) College the following week, he sounded positively vibrant. His incisive remarks on the American education system, memoir writing and the inauguration of President Barack Obama bespoke a man who was still very much passionate about Read More
In Florence with no Baedeker: Reading ‘A Room With a View’
My perusal of E.M. Forster’s classic novel began with such good intentions. With wholesome, faintly academic fervor, I embraced the prospect of reading the imperishable “A Room With a View” after several months of contemporary fiction. I love modern novelists, but I was ready to return, for a moment, to 1908, the year the novel Read More
The books we’ll embed in our skulls
This blog got me thinking (which I guess is exactly what it’s supposed to do) about what books from our time will be considered classics generations from now — providing, of course, that people still read and don’t just have info shoved into their brain through a computer chip embedded in their skull. For me, Read More
